Nightwalker

Five

My teeth were clenched when my gaze fell on the two-story house with the peeling, pale blue paint three blocks from where we encountered Lucas. I frequently hunted in this part of town. The inhabitants here struggled to eke out a living, and the air smelled thick of sweat and despair. Their lives were simple and harsh, with hopes that stretched no further than thoughts of food and warmth. Not so different than the village where I’d been born more than six centuries ago.

The street lamps at the top and the bottom of the road were out. Danaus had most likely seen to the darkness when he moved in. Thick, velvety night oozed around the houses and filled the street like heavy tar, making it easier to slip in and out of the neighborhood without being noticed.

A light breeze stirred from the south, rustling leaves on a sickly scattering of trees. The harsh, dry summer left them covered in only thin foliage that had already begun to brown. Most of the broken-down houses crowded on the street were dark except for a handful that leaked a blue glow thrown down by television sets. A high-pitched whine stole down the block as the wind blew open the gate of a sagging chain-link fence.

As I mounted the crumbling stone steps, I reached out again with my powers, running my senses through every inch of the house. Danaus was the only other creature I could pick up. Unfortunately, I couldn’t sense the naturi. I could be walking into a house full of them and wouldn’t know it until the dagger was already in my back.

The hunter looked back at me, his hand on the doorknob. He felt me use my powers as well.

“Open it,” I said with a nod of my head, relieved that my voice didn’t betray my concern. For all the world, I sounded as if I was actually looking forward to seeing Nerian, like a reunion of old friends. Hardly. My only hope was that I didn’t kill him on sight, but I had serious doubts as to whether that was a realistic thought.

Danaus pushed open the door, which moaned in angry protest. The hunter stepped inside first and moved so I could follow while he closed the door. Once inside, I turned to face him, keeping my back to the wall. I didn’t trust him or this situation. With his hands open at his sides, he walked in front of me down the main hall. The floorboards creaked and screamed under the weight of our footsteps. The walls were cracked and crumbling, and the scent of some long-dead animal lingered in the air. A dark staircase ran along the left side of the hall, leading to a silent second floor.

Stopping halfway down the hall, Danaus pulled open a door under the staircase. He flipped on a light, revealing a set of plain wooden stairs that led into the basement. I was surprised. Most homes in Savannah didn’t have basements, due to the height of the water table. I had one in my own home, but it was added at great expense. Of course, underground was the only safe place to be during the daylight hours.

A single bare bulb dangled from the ceiling above the stairs, fighting to push aside the shadows that inhabited the dark corners of the subterranean room. I followed him down the stairs, my heels echoing like gunshots off the wood. Neither of us was trying to be quiet. The scent of blood on the damp air brought me to a sharp halt on the landing. It was the first bit of proof that someone else was in the house, but I still couldn’t sense anyone. I continued down the stairs, my eyes quickly scanning the room.

The walls were made of gray concrete, covered in a spiderweb of cracks and fissures that now leaked water from the ground outside. The floor was the same cold concrete. It was completely empty except for a furnace squatting in the far corner and a network of pipes and wires overhead. The air was musty and damp, filled with mold and the faint tang of blood.

It took me a couple seconds to actually see the hunched form. Maybe it was because my mind didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to know that he actually was still alive. But once I did see him, rage flooded my senses, blotting out all rational thought. The muscles in my body involuntarily clenched and knotted as if I’d been hit. When I looked at Nerian, I didn’t see him standing against the wall, his wrists and ankles chained in iron manacles. I saw him standing over me more than five centuries ago, with that dagger covered in my blood. I heard him laughing in my mind and my scream.

And then I realized I really was screaming. I kept screaming, clamping my hands over my ears as I tried to push the memories from my mind. The sound only stopped when the rawness of my torn throat finally overcame the images. The silent night air had been shattered by the wretched sound and was left cringing in some dark corner.

I blinked, my screams still echoing in my brain. Both Danaus and the naturi were staring at me. Nerian was smiling with that same horrible smile, basking in my pain.

“You remember me!” he exclaimed. He tossed his head back and laughed, the sound somehow managing to be both musical and maniacal at the same time. I shivered, clenching my teeth against the sound as a fresh onslaught of memories danced through my brain. My knees turned to jelly and for a moment I thought I would fall, but the wave passed.

“Thank you, human,” Nerian continued. “Seeing this parasite again is a real treat. Though I’m surprised she had the sense to stay alive this long. But even cockroaches are known for their resilience.”

“I see you managed to pull yourself back together,” I said. My voice was choked and rough, failing miserably to portray my usual bravado. I finally descended the last couple of wooden stairs and stood in the basement. “I imagine it was difficult to get your intestines back inside your skin.”

At Machu Picchu so many years ago, Jabari had given me the gift of killing Nerian. We fought and I eviscerated him, leaving him curled on the ground, clutching his stomach and intestines. But the sun was rising. My own strength was failing me in the growing light. I was forced to run to find shelter before the sun finally broke above the horizon. If I had thought it was at all possible that Nerian would survive, I would have stayed and finished him, meeting my own end.

“Unshackle me and I will happily show you how difficult it was.” His tone was still light and full of amusement. There was some veiled enticement lying hidden between his words as his voice tried to work a spell over my will.

“No.” The silence settled back between us for a moment as my eyes ran over his blood-encrusted wrists, battered face, and stained clothes. “I think I like you better this way; trapped by a human.”

Nerian was of the animal clan, resulting in his shaggy mane of brown hair and the hard, aggressive bone structure of his face. His vibrant green eyes were vertically slitted, like that of a cat. The iron manacles were the only thing keeping him from calling for assistance from any other naturi or animals. The old tales of iron and its harmful effect on the fey were actually true. It kept the naturi from performing any kind of magic.

His taunting smile crumbled from his face. “Hardly a fair fight.”

“What do the naturi know of fair?”

“What do we care of fairness when dealing with vermin?” His voice had changed from one of enticement to that of a cold, hard glacier. “Both vampires and humans are beneath contempt. You should never have survived so long, but at least humans have their uses. Vampires are just parasites.”

With my teeth clenched and fists at my sides, I closed the distance between Nerian and myself. I felt more than saw Danaus take up a position behind my right shoulder. His arms were folded over his chest, his legs spread wide.

I stared at Nerian, only inches between us. In all this time, he hadn’t changed. Yet, it felt like something should have been different. He should have been scarred in some way. When I’d last seen him, both his legs were broken and he was struggling to keep his intestines in his body. I had left him for dead. He should be dead. But instead he stood before me, his wrists bloody from pulling against the iron manacles. His brown leather jerkin was splattered with blood. His sharp, wide face was smudged with dirt and blood, his thick brown hair dirty and matted. And still he smiled at me, dark amusement glinting in his green eyes.

I don’t know how long we stood there staring at each other. It could have been hours or seconds. Time had become a thing that existed outside this small, damp basement, twisting and contorting into something I no longer recognized.

“Has the seal been broken?” I demanded at last. I had no more energy for verbal sparring with him. My voice sounded rough, as if it had been dragged along the lower levels of Hell before finally reaching my ears.

I didn’t think it was possible, but his smile widened, revealing a perfect set of white teeth. “Rowe has spoken with the sun,” he said in a lyrical voice. Without words, it whispered of clear streams and green woods. That voice had bewitched scores before the slaughter. “The dawn is coming.”

There was no clear thought after that. My body throbbed with rage and all I felt was anger and fear. Enough fear that I could taste it in the back of my throat. Enough that I was drowning in it. A kaleidoscope of brutal memories flashed through my brain. The naturi held me captive for two weeks at Machu Picchu, torturing me each night until I finally escaped consciousness with the rising sun. Their hope had been to wear me down until I agreed to serve them as a weapon against the nightwalkers. They wanted me for protection as they opened the door between the two worlds, freeing the rest of their kind. But I knew they could never be free. It would mean the destruction of everything I loved.

My hand shot out and closed around his throat, squeezing until I felt my fingernails tear through skin and muscle. I squeezed until my hand was filled with his warm flesh, and then I pulled. He gave one last gasp as his throat was ripped from his body. I dropped the squishy clump of flesh at my side, but chunks of it remained buried under my nails. I stood there, letting his warm blood spray over my face and shoulders, closed my eyes as the blood ran down my arms and coated my bare stomach. A scream rose up in my throat again, but I stood silent, listening to the gurgling sounds he made as he struggled to breathe without an esophagus.

When I could no longer feel his blood raining on me, I opened my eyes. Nerian sagged forward, held up by his arms, which were still chained to the wall. His head had fallen against his chest and his body was now covered in blood. Stepping back, my mind stumbled out of the blinding haze of anger. I could taste his blood in my mouth, and a part of me panicked. Naturi blood was poisonous to nightwalkers. I spit and raised my arm to wipe it off my lips, but my arm was covered with his blood as well. A little taste wouldn’t kill me, but it was enough to send an anxious chill through me. It didn’t taste like other blood. It was more bitter and unnatural.

Turning, I suddenly found myself facing Danaus. For a moment I had forgotten he was there. He stood in a crouch, the naturi dagger in his hand. I don’t know if he’d purposefully drawn that dagger or instinctively reacted when I tore out Nerian’s throat. It didn’t matter. My emotions were still too raw and violent for me to think clearly. I lunged at him, my hands going for the dagger. He swung it at me, causing me to jerk backward. Screaming, I slashed and kicked wildly. There was no holding back anymore. I wanted death; his, and maybe even mine. Anything so I could be free of Nerian’s smile. Backing Danaus against the wall, I finally kicked the dagger free. It spun through the air and crashed against the cinder-block wall.

The monstrous piece of metal held me in its bloody thrall, and I had to be rid of it…for good. I turned my back on Danaus, heedlessly, and stalked over to the blade. With my right hand, I threw a ball of blue fire at it. I encased the dagger in flames hot enough to cause the cement to sizzle and pop. The room grew uncomfortably hot, but I poured all my anger and hatred into the fire, willing the metal to bend and melt.

Exhausted, I sank to my knees, extinguishing the blaze. Then I stared at the naturi blade and started to laugh, high-pitched and a little mad. The blade was completely untouched. For a moment the metal had glowed red, but it was unchanged. I could do nothing to it. The charms on the blade would keep it from ever rusting, chipping, or melting. As long as the naturi existed, so would this blade.

Turning my head, I narrowed my gaze on Nerian. I might not be able to get rid of the dagger, but I could wipe his existence off the earth. Instantly, his body became engulfed in beautiful yellow and orange flames. The stench of burning flesh and hair filled the air, but I didn’t care. I kept the flames on him until the body crumbled to a small heap of white ash on the floor. The smoke filtered up through the warped boards of the ceiling to fill the upper part of the house. I didn’t care if anyone noticed. I’d be gone from this place soon enough.

Nerian was gone, but his memory would never leave me. For the first time in centuries I longed for Jabari. He had saved me from Nerian and his kind once. He had helped to keep the horrid memories at bay. Now I longed for the feel of his strong arms around me and his calm, cool presence in my brain, cradling my thoughts.

But Jabari was gone; dead or just absent, I didn’t know. It also didn’t matter. Nerian was dead at last. I had stood on my own two feet for more than four centuries. I would continue to do so no matter how weary I became.

The sound of a foot scraping along the cold concrete floor drew my attention back to Danaus. Gazing at him over my shoulder, a soft sigh rose from me. I felt a little freer than I’d been in a long time. A ghost had been sent back to Hell where it belonged; where I knew it would wait for me. But that wasn’t now.

I was more than a little surprised that Danaus had not tried to kill me when I attacked him. He’d defended himself, but nothing more. He had not needed me to kill Nerian for him; the naturi was at his mercy. To keep me alive, Danaus must have still needed something from me. However, I was coming up with fewer reasons to leave the hunter alive. Right now I only needed to know how he captured Nerian and if there were any more naturi.

“What do you know of the naturi?” I inquired, turning to face him. I held up my right hand and a small yellow flame danced on the palm.

Danaus stood against the far wall, a bead of sweat running from his temple down along his hard jaw. His dark blue eyes were narrowed in the faint light. With his right hand, he grabbed the right side of his leather coat and held it open. He reached over with his left hand and pulled a folded piece of paper from the interior pocket. With a flick of his wrist, he sent the paper across the room, to land less than a foot away from me. Extinguishing the flame, I leaned forward and picked up the paper. It was another high-gloss, color picture.

This one was distinctly different from the others. It was of a woman lying naked on reddish-brown paving stones. Her arms were thrown over her head. The skin on her chest had been peeled back and all of her organs removed. The little piles of black ash around the body had been her various pieces. Her blood pooled beneath her, but on the ground several feet away from her, symbols similar to the ones carved into the trees were drawn with her blood. Her face had been turned toward the camera, her mouth forever frozen in a scream that no one would ever hear. She had been alive during the ceremony. I imagine she was kept alive and lucid right up until her heart had been removed.

“When?” The single word floated through the room like a white wraith. The momentary peace I’d found with Nerian’s death had shriveled up in the pit of my stomach.

“Three months ago, night of the new moon.”

I nodded. I understood enough about magic to know that you started new magic under the new moon for the maximum potency. The full moon was used for breaking old spells, curses, and for binding. The naturi were just getting started.

“Where?”

“Konark.”

My head snapped up, eyes locking on his grim features. The muscles in my body clenched painfully. “Where?”

“Konark. The Sun Temple in Orissa, India.”

“I know it’s in India,” I said irritably, straightening up. My brain was struggling to take in this information. They had started making the necessary sacrifices in order to break the seal and open the door between the worlds. There were twelve sacred locations scattered around the world that could hold enough power for the naturi to perform the necessary spells. But how could they be doing this now? It didn’t make sense. It had been roughly five hundred years since they had last attempted this. Why now?

“There will be more,” Danaus said. It was more of a question than a statement.

I looked up at him, weighing my options. “Two more.” My earlier relief slowly leaked from my soul and I tried to organize my thoughts.

“You asked about a seal. What did you mean?”

My gaze fell to the floor for a moment as I thought back to the stories my maker, Sadira, and my beloved Jabari had told me. My own memories of Machu Picchu were sketchy and fragmented, but I knew the old “ghost stories.” I’d read our histories and the journals written by other nightwalkers detailing all we knew of the naturi.

“Centuries ago, before my time, before the time of any nightwalker that still exists, the naturi lived on Earth. Vampires forced them to another world. One that was similar and connected to this world, but different. A nightwalker triad closed the door and fashioned a seal on this side to bar them from returning. It’s like an elaborate magical lock.”

“So, the seal has to be protected.”

“That’s only part of it. The naturi have other locations they can use to make the other two sacrifices. We have no idea where and when they will strike.”

“I might.”

Wiping off a drop of blood that was running down my cheek, I narrowed my eyes at Danaus. “How?”

“I am part of a large organization, spread around the globe. We will know if something is happening.” The hunter dropped his hands into the pockets of his leather duster, a faint smile tugging at the right corner of his mouth.

“Like you knew about Konark? Or the symbols on the trees?”

The would-be smile disappeared instantly. “We didn’t know we should be watching for something at the temple. We know there will be at least two more sacrifices and that they will likely happen around certain phases of the moon. We can watch for signs.”

“It’s more than the moon phases,” I grumbled, shoving my right hand through my hair, trying to ignore that it was now cold and sticky. “They could also use seasonal holidays or even any of the holidays from the dead religions. It’s hard to say when they will attempt the second sacrifice, or even where.”

“But vampires are limited to only night surveillance. My people are not.”

I frowned. I hated to admit it, but he did have an edge in that arena, and help in this matter was necessary. We couldn’t call in the lycanthropes for daytime assistance because they would be too easily enthralled by the naturi, their former masters. And working with witches and warlocks was always sketchy at best and never particularly reliable.

“You seem to be very well informed,” I said, cocking my head as I took a couple steps closer. Danaus removed his hands from his pockets and bent his frame as if preparing for an attack. “You knew of the naturi, you knew of the symbols in the trees, you knew where to find me and even some of my past.”

“The organization is very well informed. We have spent many years watching your kind.”

I shook my head, placing my hands on my hips. “Oh, this is more than just watching. Someone has been giving you information about nightwalkers and our world.”

“We are well informed, but not strong enough to directly take on the naturi. I was sent to find someone who defeated them at Machu Picchu.”

“Yes, I was at Machu Picchu, but the triad defeated the naturi.”

“Where is the triad?”

I just smiled in return. Did he honestly think I was going to tell a known hunter where to find three of our most important nightwalkers? But in truth, one was already dead and a second was missing, possibly dead. I didn’t have a lot of good news to offer on this front.

“I thought I had earned it. I gave you information on the symbols and the sacrifice. I also gave you Nerian,” he continued, taking a step closer.

“It’s a good start.”

“We’re also offering to watch the other sites for you.”

“Mmmm…yes, very altruistic of you.”

Danaus snorted, closing the distance between us. “I would love nothing more than to see both naturi and nightwalkers wiped from the earth. However, I realize that the naturi are the bigger threat, and we need your assistance. But you also need our help. I am offering a temporary truce. We eliminate the threat of the naturi and then we can get back to the natural order of things.”

“Back to killing each other?”

A smile danced in his eyes. “Exactly.”

I nodded once and took a step back from him. “I need to think about this. Meet me at Orleans Square at Hull Street and Jefferson tomorrow night at ten o’clock.” I turned to leave the basement, but paused as another thought occurred to me, my right foot resting on the first stair. “Before coming, drop that in the river,” I said, pointing to the naturi dagger against the opposite wall. “It will not help you.”

I headed up the stairs and outside without looking back. A breeze rushed from some secret hiding place, rubbing against my body. I suppressed a shiver as it chilled the blood still coating my skin. I was a mess, but no one noticed me as I walked down the street. It was a weak entrancement spell that all nightwalkers could perform from the moment they were reborn. It worked on most, though witches, warlocks, and psychics were somewhat problematic. At that moment I really didn’t care. I was covered in the blood of a naturi, something I never expected to happen again. With the exception of a few dozen left in hiding, the naturi had been wiped from the earth and sealed away.

Yet, on the silent street in the middle of my own domain, I wondered how many naturi were lurking nearby. Was there one hiding in the shadows, watching me, waiting for the opportunity to strike? Or worse, follow me back to my private lair, where he would stake me during the daylight hours? And who was this Rowe that Nerian had mentioned? Was he the one who sought to free the long-lost queen of the naturi? Too many questions…and there were no easy answers to be had.

But the path was clear. I had to discover who this Rowe was and stop him from making any more sacrifices. And the only way to do that was to locate the triad, or at the very least, what was left of it.